Girl With Curious Hair

by David Foster Wallace

  Besides, New Realism, being young, and realistic, is pretty slow, too. Ask Ambrose. Ask Mark; he’s checked it out. It diverges, in its slowness, from the really real only in its extreme economy, its Prussian contempt for leisure, its obsession with the confining limitations of its own space, its grim proximity to its own horizon. It’s some of the most heartbreaking stuff available at any fine book-seller’s anywhere. I’d check it out.

  At the point of a surprisingly patient parallel line, at the C.I. Airport Avis counter, a very big farmer, in overalls—so big he unconsciously treats the counter like a footstool, has his boot on the counter and his elbow on his knee—is trying to barter an entire thousand-bushel crop of prime Illinois feed corn, plus his ’81 Allys-Chalmers thresher/harvester, for just three weeks’ rental of anything foreign. Anything foreign at all, is what’s sad. It’s for his oldest kid, apparently. His kids and our kids watch the negotiations. The Avis attendant, who clearly recognizes a number-two’s imperative to try harder, explains that while she doesn’t make policy, and can only relate that policy to the public, and must decline the barter, she empathizes with the farmer a lot.

  “Datsun or nothing,” D.L. iterates to the two, and Mark Nechtr grits his teeth, producing a fine tight smile. D.L. is seen only in Datsuns. It’s a neurosis, for sure, but one so powerful as to dictate acquiescence in many amusing instances we haven’t time for. Sternberg, all this time, is peering outward around the big farmer’s thigh at yet another poster, this one for that Central Illinois bowling and family-fun center. Though Sternberg has lived with his parents all his life, and has in fact kissed only them, ever, he’s puzzled by this term, “family fun.”

  The Avis representative’s refusal of the big farmer’s bartered offer has pity and empathy in it, however not compassion or sympathy. The absence of sympathy is probably due to the fact that her mouth is full of a sweet bite-sized Breakfast DoughNugget as she patiently explains Avis’s unbendable remittance policy of cash, locally drawn check w/ guarantee card, and in any case at least data on a national credit card, which in this awkward age means MasterCard, AmEx, Visa, CitiCorp, or the new, convenient, and option-widening Discover Card. The farmer has only raw grain, and (weirdly) too much of it for it to be worth anything. And Avis’s profit projections on thresher rentals out of airports are understandably bleak. Surely the farmer recognizes that the situation is no one’s fault.

  He does. The huge farmer.

  Sternberg points the big poster out to D.L. “ENJOY A WHOLE NEW DIMENSION IN BOWLING” is its basic pitch.

  He’s puzzled about family-fun, and the poster makes him somehow fearful. “Bowling’s pretty darn three-dimensional already, isn’t it?”

  Mark smiles. “Four-dimensional bowling?” D.L. laughs. Her laugh tends to sound like a cough. And obversely. Sternberg peers at the two-dimensional image, scanning the ad’s family of models for flaws. Mark stands tiptoed, flexing his ankles, his arrow a little vertical wrinkle under his surgeon’s shirt.

  And they’re all of a sudden at the counter’s long line’s front, Sternberg sees. What’s happened to the big old farmer who’s unable to trade a whole season’s sweat and effort, in the tradition that made the U.S.A.—nay, the whole evolution from hunting-gathering nomadism to cultivation and community—possible and great, for a lousy three weeks of flashy transport? Has he gathered his flat-faced brood around him, raised the bill of his seed-company cap to rub his own tired brick-red face, and gone off to try even harder at car rental’s number one agency? Mark feels as though he ought to be depressed about it: the car was for the farmer’s eldest son’s potential wedding to a loan officer’s daughter. But Sternberg can see neither farmers nor broods anyplace, and his evacuation-imperative has now become a sick ache in his lower gut, and he draws out a fag, a 100, a type of cigarette he likes because it not only burns forever but also emits its light at a comfortable distance from his body. Again, the preceding generation of cripplingly self-conscious writers, obsessed with their own interpretation, would mention at this point, just as we’re possibly getting somewhere, that the story isn’t getting anywhere, isn’t progressing in the seamless Freitagian upsweep we should have scaled by this, mss. p. 35, time. They’d trust, though, à la their hierophant C____ Ambrose, that this explicit internal acknowledgment of their failure to start the show would release them somehow from the obligation to start the show. Or that it might, in some recursive and above all ingenious way, represent the very movement it professes to deny. Mark’s fix on these Gamarahites is that they’re basically a sincere lot—critics, really, instead of the priests they want to be—and that it’s ironic that it’s because of their very critical integrity that these guys get captured by the very pretend-industry they’re trying to regulate. Mark Nechtr is unfashionably patient, in line. T. Sternberg embodies a different generational story. Gray clouds roll in slow pain against half his sight. As the nicotine becomes a bright blood-tide, crashing against sleep-dep, ugly ideas descend on Sternberg, and are recorded here w/o comment. Fucking pathetic farmer. Fucking pathetic Midwest Avis girl with anvil-shaped hair and a translucent wart on her brow and sugary-shit at the corners of her mouth. The black girl-hair on her arm, like, gleams. Fucking Mark with his hypnotized stare and sensitive lashes and stink of health and his lone aluminum arrow, attached to the phallic little guy or what, terrific hiding job inside his neckless effeminate surgeon’s shirt so the tip shows just under his throat. The clot can’t even tell how he looks to other people. Fucking D.L. with her trim trimestered belly and limbo pelvis and too-clever pout, her failure to match memory, a dog-eared copy of something Progressive held across her chest in lieu of the jiggle of any discernible tit. Fucking Tom, varnished with a light oily sweat in the absence of one lousy visible flaw on the poster of these bowlers having family fun in a new dimension. We just want to ride, dude. Gratis. To the Reunion. We just want to do the bare unavoidable minimum. Pay taxes, die. Sternberg has resentment even he can’t see, it’s so deep inside. So an ugly mood, and a desperate need to evacuate his body. It’s loathsomely real, I’m afraid. But what’s to be done?

  Avis girl w/ translucent wart and glazed DoughNugget behind aluminum counter: “How can we help you, today?”

  Across the lower terminal is the lower lounge, mostly empty, the plastic tables round sprouts supported by single central stems, atomic clouds with tops shaved flat, the bartender in his green vest hanging washed glasses by their stems beneath the huge TV raised to its tavern-height in a corner on the side Sternberg can’t see out of—though his other eye is marvelously keen, the eye of a marksman, really.

  “I feel we should tell you right at the outset we’ll be needing a Datsun,” D.L. says, the counter at what ought to be breast-level.

  “Hawaii Five-O” and the bartender are both on their last of forty-eight straight hours. The bartender is grim, has to hear Danno being told to book somebody just one more time.… But it’s an episode Sternberg knows, moving his head to see. He just loves episodes he already knows.

  “No more Datsuns? Mark, she seems to be saying there are no more Datsuns.”

  Looking at Sternberg and the distant elevated TV: “Datsuns are Nissans, now, Sweets. Ask if they have Nissans.” Mark’s broken this news to D.L. before. It never sinks in.

  It’s the first bit of violence, here, in this episode. Jack Lord’s antagonists always get introduced through violence inflicted on the innocent and cameo. See these menacing oriental men enter a beauty salon where an occidental and male hairdresser is alone, putting receipts in order, soon to close. Menacingly they draw the shades and flip the window’s sign over so its OPEN side faces Sternberg and the surprised hairdresser, who tries to explain that they don’t do men, in this particular shop; one Oriental drawing a flicked stiletto, weltschmerzian end-lust aglitter in eyes far smaller than good old familiar occidental eyes, announcing, “We do”; and the revelation dawns on victim and viewer alike as “Hawaii Five-O” cuts to shots of an almost tidal-sized wave, a wave
that conveys far better than realism the total disorder and -memberment taking place in that occidental Honolulu hair salon; as Mark, too, succumbs to the familiar enchantment of popular culture, leaves transportation negotiations to his bride, and drifts with Sternberg like flotsam toward the lounge and the syndicated television program “Hawaii Five-O.” Numerous references to popular culture pervade the art which all three of these sexually mature children consume and aspire one day to produce and re-present. Popular culture is the symbolic representation of what people already believe.

  But so they have a coccyx-hostile chair at a table’s wood-grained circle, the boys, in a lower lounge almost empty, as morning lounges ought, Sternberg ordering a Jolt cola and fishing for fags in his shirt, Mark having to remove his arrow as he sits, since the tip’s at his throat; and his throat wants coffee, and he can’t believe the bartender’s terse suggestion that he go up to the cafeteria, if he wants something hot. Meanwhile, across the terminal, in view of Mark but not Tom, who’s into reruns, stands Drew-Lynn, edgy as only a tranquilizer hangover can make you edgy, trying to negotiate the legal rental of a Nissan, as the line behind her grows too long to really even be observed. Mark withdraws from a surgeon’s shirt of surprising storage complexity a thick Ziploc bag one-third full of oily and darkly red things. Sternberg is witnessing Che, the Five-O M.E., trace a kind of chalk ectoplasm around the tastefully unfocused cadaver of the hairdresser; the first he sees of the roses is when Mark offers him one.

  “Bit of fried rose, maybe?” reaching pale fingers in, bending as if to sniff coffee.

  “Fried rose?”

  Mark holds a petal so greasy it makes his fingers shine. “It’s like a delicacy. You behead them and fry them in oil, and eat them.”

  Tom stares at both Mark and himself, lighting a 100 the way a cigar is lit, torching it, so that the end gets ravaged.

  “Try one. I get them from somebody pretty trustworthy. They’re better than they look. Try one. It’ll pick you up.”

  He looks at it. “I think I’d rather drink bong-water than eat something that looks like that.”

  “Bong-water’s a totally different issue.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Just one. Try it. You look like hell. You can wash it down with Jolt, won’t even taste it.”

  No inappropriate comestibles for D.L., though. D.L.’s psychic was dead-set against fried roses. Hors d’oeuvres to a meal you don’t even want to think about, she’d called them. It was she who told D.L. she might be seen only in Datsuns. That the Death card was basically an OK card. But to consult her before ever leaving home. To wear amber resin instead of perfume, it’s good karma, opens the third eye, plus smells good, like distant orange cake. D.L. wears amber:

  “Excuse me? I heard only doughnut. A Nissan, then. We will, no, not be driving it out of state. We’ll be taking it only to Collision, just West of here. Is Collision just West of here? Steelritter, yes. We’re here for the Reunion of Everyone Who’s Ever Appeared in a McDonald’s Commercial” (caps hers). “The ultimate McDonald’s commercial. A kind of logarithm of all other McDonald’s commercials, a spot so huge the brochure, here’s the brochure, the brochure says ‘New equipment will have to be designed even to try to countenance the union of all the thirty years’ actors consuming, to attempt to capture a crowded and final transfiguration that will represent, and so transmit, a pan-global desire for meat, a collective erection of the world community’s true and total restaurant.’ I know, Steelritter Advertising tends to talk that way. And Mr. Steelritter wasn’t here to meet us. We were late. We. My husband and friend are both”—looking—“my husband is in the lounge, just across, facing the window, you can just see him. Mark Nechtr, spouse. With a ch and no vowel. He should go down first. Next D.L. Eberhardt, introduction of the McDonaldLand outdoor-eating and family-fun areas, winter, 1970. I sliding down a compactly curved slide, my possibly bare little bottom shrieking frictionally against very very cold metal. I innocently offering the Hamburglar a burger he doesn’t even chew, swallowing it whole as I recoil. The poor man was bulging out of his costume by the time Steelritter was satisfied with the shot. He was a perfectionist. He and the actors who wore costumes didn’t get along well, was our impression. Our. A Thomas Sternberg should go down, too, as a possible driver. He’s from the introduction of the Drive-Thru option, winter, 1970. He petitioning a smiley-faced intercom for a FunMeal while the actor at the wheel reaches down to tousle his hair. Relishing the break he’d deserved that day. That’s probably more information than you need. It’s just that we’re tired, we’ve flown in all the way from the East Coast, we haven’t had quality sleep, or been met, and we would so much just like to get there. With minimal hassle. We are late, and have transportation needs, and the credit to satisfy them. And our national credit card of choice is: Visa. You’re right, that’s not technically our name on the card. The card’s technically in my husband Mark Nechtr’s father’s name. He’s in detergent. Steelritter doesn’t handle his firm, I’m afraid.”

  There is narrative movement. Sternberg sits, fearful, trying to lift his shoes from view. He fingers his forehead in further fear and indecision as the smell of what what he’s consumed produces rises around him. Elsewhere, red-toothed, Mark idly flips his arrow up and over and down and into the lounge’s round table, where the razor-sharp Dexter target-tip sticks. He’s good at this—it’s a lounge trick—just hang the nock and part of the cedar shaft over the table’s edge, give it a carefully casual slap from below, and the thing goes up, end-over-end, and comes down straight, to stay. The bartender, who wouldn’t be pleased at punctured tabletops, is however engrossed in what the menacing Orientals, now in leather, are doing to an occidental nun.

  “Is this because J.D. Steelritter, who probably owns this whole airport and everything in it, doesn’t handle detergent?” D.L. demands. “Well no I’m trying to tell you it is our card, it’s just in his father’s name. Wedding present. We’re practically newlyw____ but why does it need to be in our name? I’m over twenty-one, I’m twenty-five, for Christ’s sake—look at the license. I’m pregnant. I have a spouse. No, Mark does not have a Visa in his own name. He’s just a graduate student. We’re only just now establishing credit. Tom Sternberg I know doesn’t have a credit card. He uses only money. Not even a checking account. He pretends it’s a political idea, but really he’s afraid he’ll get confused, overextended.”

  The Avis representative chews empathetically as she explains that renters need cards in their own names. That she’s only relating company policy. That there it is in black and white. Legal thing. Have to establish that you’re accredited adults who can assume responsibility for someone else’s high-velocity machine.

  “But Miss this Visa has unlimited credit. Look—it’s got ‘LIMIT: SKY’ printed right on it. Embossed.”

  On Mark’s table are his upright Dexter aluminum, his Ziploc of Ambrose’s fried roses, a tall thin bar-glass of cola, and an untended 100 that refuses to die in its ashtray.

  “Let me understand you,” D.L. tells the anvil-haired Avis attendant as the mood of the line behind her moves beyond ugly and restless into something more like at peace and sort of awed, watching the exchange. “Though the credit is unlimited,” she says slowly, “it’s not ours, you’re saying. It’s unlimited, but it’s not about responsibility, and so in some deep car-rental-agency sense isn’t really credit at all?”

  The Avis lady, whose name is Nola, chews a bit of chocolate glaze, nodding with the genuine empathy that got her the job in the first place.

  D.L. turns to no one in particular: “This is an outrage.”

  And it is, sort of.

  “Can I help, perhaps?” It’s the young man with the soft beard, crisp bills and crammed clipboard, holding a vending machine’s paper cup of coffee by its flimsy fold-out handle, exchanging pleasant nods with Nola, of Avis.

  “Are you affiliated with the Reunion of Everyone Who’s Ever Appeared in a McDonald’s Commercial?” D.L. a
sks.

  “No,” the guy admits, sipping.

  D.L. turns her lime-green back. “Then no,” she says. “Miss,” she says, “what then do you propose we do? Is there any sort of public transportation in Central Illinois? Don’t laugh. We’re in real trouble. We have a severely limited amount of time to get to Collision and the Funhouse discotheque that J.D. Steelritter, who just by the way does own this airport, doesn’t he…?”